I really should change my personal text

Lockheed Martin Corp., Lockheed Martin Space, Huntsville, Alabama, is the successful offeror of a $928,000,000
ceiling indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for the hypersonic conventional strike weapon. This contract
provides for the design, development, engineering, systems integration, test, logistics planning, and aircraft integration
support of all the elements of a hypersonic, conventional, air-launched, stand-off weapon. Work will be performed in
Huntsville, Alabama. This award is the result of a competitive acquisition and three offers were received. Fiscal 2018
research, development, test and evaluation funds will be obligated at the time of award on the first task order. Air
Force Life Cycle Management, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, is the contracting activity (FA8682-18-D-0003).

I really should change my personal text

The Air Force has established a nearly $1 billion program to prototype a long-range, air-launched, hypersonic strike weapon and Lockheed Martin has elbowed away two other competitors to win the project, the service has revealed.

Lockheed, which beat a Raytheon-Boeing team and another competitor for the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon prototyping effort, now assumes a dominant role in leading two parallel Air Force projects that aim to develop a long-range, conventional prompt strike capability.

Spokesman for two other contractors the Air Force invited to compete in the HCSW program -- Northrop Grumman and Orbital ATK -- both declined to confirm whether their companies had submitted a bid or comment in any way on the contract award. Northrop is slated to acquire Orbital ATK this year. Debroah VanNierop, a Boeing spokeswoman, confirmed to Inside Defense the company was a subcontractor on a proposal led by Raytheon.

On April 18, the Air Force announced Huntsville, AL-based Lockheed Martin Space to be the “successful offeror” of a contract potentially worth $928 million to design, develop, and perform engineering, systems integration, test, logistics, planning and aircraft integration support of all elements of a hypersonic, conventional, air-launched, stand-off weapon.

The objective of the HCSW program, informally called “Hacksaw,” is to develop long-range hypersonic missile prototypes that can be integrated on the service's current bomber and fighter aircraft fleets and be supported in all operations, mission-planning and sustainment efforts, according to the Air Force.

“This effort is one of two hypersonic weapon prototyping efforts being pursued by the Air Force to accelerate hypersonics research and development,” said Ann Stefanek, an Air Force spokeswoman. “The Air Force is using prototyping to explore the art-of-the-possible and to advance these technologies to a capability as quickly as possible.”

The second Air Force prototyping project is the Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), with support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, to also develop a long-range, prompt strike capability.

Stefanek declined to offer further detail about the programs, specifically whether the core technology of the projects was based around an air-breathing, hypersonic system or a hypersonic boost-glide system.

The full scope of the Hacksaw program -- which is slated to potentially fund work through engineering and manufacturing development -- was not previously known. The project was hatched in FY-18 as part of a “Lifecycle Prototyping” effort that sought $153 million to fund numerous technologies; it is not clear how much of that is allocated to Hacksaw. The Air Force's FY-19 budget request establishes a dedicated Hacksaw budget line, seeking $89.3 million. Future funding for the hypersonic conventional strike program was not previously disclosed.

By comparison, the ARRW -- which also was broken out from the Lifecycle Prototyping project for the first time in the FY-19 budget -- is seeking $169 million, a potentially bigger program.

The Air Force, according to the FY-19 budget request, plans to "leverage the synergistic efforts" of DARPA's existing contract with Lockheed Martin for a Tactical Boost Glide demonstration to further the ARRW program. It appears the Air Force's new ARRW project will overlap with the TBG program -- a joint DARPA-Air Force initiative to develop and demonstrate technologies to enable future air-launched, tactical-range hypersonic boost glide systems.

The scale of the Hacksaw project is comparable to the Pentagon's marquee effort over the last decade to develop technologies for a long-range hypersonic strike weapon as part of the Conventional Prompt Strike program, run by the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The Defense Department has spent $1.2 billion over the last 10 years to develop a boost-glide weapon and earlier this year disclosed plans to put the Navy in charge of the project beginning in FY-20, with the goal of outfitting submarines with a hypersonic strike weapon.

Last summer, the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center -- after asking industry to register interest in supporting Hacksaw requirements -- determined five companies were able to meet the service's needs: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Orbital ATK and Raytheon.

In the end, the Air Force received a total of three offers from industry, according to the announcement.

The Hacksaw program is being financed with funds from its advanced component development and prototyping accounts and is part of a larger Technology Transition Program to “demonstrate, prototype, and experiment with technologies and concepts to enable or accelerate their transition to acquisition programs and/or operational use,” according to the Air Force budget.

“The Technology Transition Program addresses the gap between initial technology or concept development and demonstration, and successful acquisition and operational capability implementation,” according to the Air Force's FY-19 budget request.

The Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon project integrates Air Force-enabled “system technologies into a prototype that will demonstrate the viability of this concept to be fielded as a long-range prompt strike capability,” according to the service's FY-19 budget request. “HCSW will design, develop, manufacture, and test, a number of prototype vehicles to inform decisions concerning HCSW acquisition and production,” the budget states.

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I wonder if Reaction Engines might be in on the Lockheed bid. They have a US operation which is tied pretty tightly to LM, and they seem to have been pretty active of late. On the other hand, still seems like a lot of engine to put on an expendable weapon.

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The hypersonic contract is also a joint effort with the Army and Navy, Wilson said, with the system using an Army-tested warhead that was developed for the Navy. It will be an “Army front end on an Air Force booster, tested off an Air Force aircraft,”

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The hypersonic contract is also a joint effort with the Army and Navy, Wilson said, with the system using an Army-tested warhead that was developed for the Navy. It will be an “Army front end on an Air Force booster, tested off an Air Force aircraft,”

CLEARANCE: Above Top Secret

The hypersonic contract is also a joint effort with the Army and Navy, Wilson said, with the system using an Army-tested warhead that was developed for the Navy. It will be an “Army front end on an Air Force booster, tested off an Air Force aircraft,”

CLEARANCE: Above Top Secret

The hypersonic contract is also a joint effort with the Army and Navy, Wilson said, with the system using an Army-tested warhead that was developed for the Navy. It will be an “Army front end on an Air Force booster, tested off an Air Force aircraft,”

CLEARANCE: Above Top Secret

The Defense Department is exploring a potential new ultra-fast, air-launched cruise missile -- specifically a naval variant of the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept -- a joint Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Air Force effort slated to produce a flying prototype in fiscal year 2019.

Insight into how urgently the U.S. Air Force wants to field a hypersonic strike weapon has emerged even as Lockheed Martin officially acknowledges the April award of a potential $928 million contract to develop the air-launched missile.

In a document justifying its decision to award a single contract to develop the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon (HCSW) after only a limited competition, the Air Force says it plans to conduct the critical design review (CDR) just 24 months after contract award, at the end of fiscal 2019. Early operational capability of the Mach 5-plus missile on an existing fighter/bomber aircraft is scheduled for fiscal 2022.

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"The Air Force plans to deploy the first of these systems — known as the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon (HCSW/Hacksaw) — by 2022. According to the Air Force, the HCSW is a solid-rocket-powered GPS-guided system that would employ a version of the AHW hypersonic glider and launch off a B-52 bomber. In April 2019, the Air Force awarded a $928 million contract to Lockheed Martin to design, develop, and test this system.

The Air Force is also pursuing a program, known as the Tactical Boost Glide (TBG) system, employing a glider similar to the CAV/HTV-2 and launching on a modified version of the Army’sTactical Missile System (ATacMS). Moreover, in August 2018, the Air Force awarded a second contract to Lockheed Martin — valued at up to $480 million — to develop a follow-on prototype for this type of hypersonic glider. This program, known as the air -launched, rapid-response weapon (ARRW), would enter the force later in the 2020s."

An interesting detail about Reaction Engines in the Aviation Week article:

One goal is to identify potential technologies, such as the SABRE inlet precooler, that could be applied to make supersonic engines, such as the Rolls-Royce EJ200 for the Eurofighter Typhoon, more efficient.

“We shouldn’t then read into that or say we’re going to achieve a hypersonic Typhoon,” Hillier added. “There are many advantages besides achieving higher speed through the sort of technology that Reaction Engines has.”

While Reaction Engines has used Skylon to attract a lot of attention, at heart they're a very pragmatic propulsion engineering company and it appears that SABRE is a portfolio of technologies that can find near-term applications - and revenue - before a complete spaceplane takes flight.

An interesting detail about Reaction Engines in the Aviation Week article:

One goal is to identify potential technologies, such as the SABRE inlet precooler, that could be applied to make supersonic engines, such as the Rolls-Royce EJ200 for the Eurofighter Typhoon, more efficient.

“We shouldn’t then read into that or say we’re going to achieve a hypersonic Typhoon,” Hillier added. “There are many advantages besides achieving higher speed through the sort of technology that Reaction Engines has.”

While Reaction Engines has used Skylon to attract a lot of attention, at heart they're a very pragmatic propulsion engineering company and it appears that SABRE is a portfolio of technologies that can find near-term applications - and revenue - before a complete spaceplane takes flight.

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The articles are pretty wide-ranging but are mostly about a British parallel to HCSW, so they make an interesting footnote here. The stuff about SABRE is tangential, but I didn't see the need to make redundant duplicate posts to the Skylon or Tempest threads as well.

I really should change my personal text

This is a thread about one specific program (HCSW). For the sake of digging stuff up it would be better to only post information on it here. The SABRE deserves its own place here so that we can follow all the development on it. Just my 2 cents!